


A Brief History of Love

by wanttobeatree



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn, Biblical References, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-05-20 22:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: Angels know all about love, of course; that's sort of the wholepoint. But the way that humans love is different: messy and complicated andnew.





	1. Chapter 1

Reassignment was technically a punishment, of course. A way of saying ‘we don’t know quite what you did wrong, and the Almighty just sort of smiled when we asked Her, but we know you did _something_ and you know we know and we know that you know, so let’s not mention it again, or else’. 

Aziraphale doesn’t really mind, although he tries not to let it show too much, as you never know who might be watching. Eden is Paradise, both literally and figuratively, perfect and more or less unchanging - sometimes She moves the flowers around, but there are only so many ways one can rearrange the roses even if one is the supreme being - and to be politely yet firmly shown the door was of course a blow. And yet...

And yet, there lay such an awful lot of world beyond the Garden’s walls, filled with branches that shook in the new spring winds; leaves that changed colours with - what were they calling it? - the seasons; creatures that crept out only at night, or on the second Tuesday of every month, or in the quiet moments after heavy rainfall. In a world of such ever-changing beauty, it seems a shame not to explore it.

And yet, giving away the flaming sword might not have officially been the Right thing to do, but Aziraphale privately suspects it wasn’t quite the _wrong_ thing, either.

And yet, here he was, sitting on a tree stump, dandling a baby on his knee.

“Aren’t you a handsome little fellow?” Aziraphale croons, bouncing said handsome little fellow up and down. “Don’t you look just like your mother?”

Eve beams across at them from her spot by the fire pit where she stirs a pot of stew. She and Adam have built quite a nice little life for themselves - as far as living in exile from Paradise goes, anyway: a spot in the valleys where the sun is not too hot and the rains are not too hard, with a little clay and straw hut and a herd of irritable goats. The lions have learnt to stay away with only a little miraculous intervention and the flaming sword, rarely used for its intended purpose these days, leans against a wall within easy reach to stoke the fire.

“He has Adam’s eyes,” Eve says, sprinkling dried herbs into the pot.

“He does?” Aziraphale lifts the baby up higher, tilting him into the light, and Cain laughs and claps his pudgy hands together. “Oh my, I see what you mean. Isn’t that marvelous? The two of you mixed together into a whole new being! How clever.”

Babbling in some tongue even Aziraphale can’t understand, Cain grabs hold of sticky fistful of Aziraphale’s hair and tugs. Aziraphale yelps, which apparently is not the response the little fellow was hoping for; his small face crumples, turning blotchily red and then splitting wide open to let out an unholy wail.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says.

God, as far as he can tell, had absolutely no hand in the creation of babies; of course, She must have known they would _happen_ , and planned for the eventuality, as all Adam and Eve’s bits and pieces have proven up to the task. But to produce something so small and delicate (and so constantly sticky), unable to walk or talk or fend for itself, utterly dependent on its parents’ care and love…? It strikes Aziraphale as a rather crucial design flaw in Her otherwise impeccable work.

He has watched goats beget goats who then begat yet more goats in the time it had taken Cain to learn to waddle very short and ungraceful distances. 

Eve lifts her shrieking son out of Aziraphale’s arms, clucking her tongue and crooning a wordless melody; the effect is instantaneous: the baby quiets down, hiccups, curls into his mother’s embrace, a picture of innocence once more. He fits perfectly against her round belly, heavy with child. How charming it will be when he has a younger sibling to play with.

Aziraphale takes his leave, wiping his hands clean on the hem of his bright white robes as he goes.

How utterly human, he thinks, for the survival of the species to depend on its capacity to love.

 

*

 

Birds have a tendency to alight on Aziraphale when he strolls through the woods. It’s not a problem, per se; he does love all God’s creatures, after all. Even the goats. But the birds _do_ insist on singing whilst they sit on him, to say nothing of their occasional attempts to tend to his wings.

So it comes as something of a relief when the shadows shift and darken, almost imperceptibly, and the small flock of swallows that have accompanied him on his evening constitutional take flight in fright. Beneath the whirring of a dozen pairs of wings, there is the sound of slow, soft slithering, like silk against silk. Aziraphale brushes feathers from his hair.

“Hallo, angel,” says the snake.

“Oh. Hello again - Crawly, was it?”

“That’ss right.” Crawly lowers his head from the branches of his tree, coils shifting and curling in sinuous waves. In the dappled light, his scales shift in hue from deepest black to burnished red and midnight blue. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“How’s, er - how’s Hell?” Aziraphale asks politely.

“Bit miffed about the apple thing. Between you and me, I don’t think head office know if it wass good or bad, so they’re erring on the side of anything that confussses them must be bad. Bad for us, I mean. Good for your lot.”

“Ours is not to reason why.”

Crawly tilts his head from side to side, peering at Aziraphale from each of his golden eyes. His tongue flicks out to taste the air.

“ _Yourss_ , maybe,” he hisses in reply. “My lot’ss all about reassoning why. ‘Specially when we’re not supposed to.”

“Well, we do have rather different job descriptions.”

Aziraphale turns and begins walking again, in the direction of a lovely little glade he knows lies quite close by, filled with wild strawberries (not, admittedly, that any other kind of strawberry had been invented yet). Instead of returning to whatever it is demons get up to in the treetops, Crawly flows down to the ground and slithers along beside him.

“It’ss nice to see Adam and Eve getting along so well out here, issn’t it? And the little one’s fun.”

“You’re not to meddle with them, Crawly. I won’t stand for it.”

“Me, meddle?”

“You gave them the apple!”

“You gave them a flaming sword!”

“That is _hardly_ the same thing,” Aziraphale splutters, wagging a finger at the demon. It’s hard to tell with a reptilian face, but he has the horrible suspicion Crawly is grinning at him.

“Oh, you’re right, can’t imagine what’sss more dangerous: the knowledge of good and evil or a dirty great sharp piece of metal that’s on fire.”

“They disobeyed Her! I would’ve thought _you_ of all creatures would agree that’s dangerous, wouldn’t you? I - oh, I mean -” He comes to an abrupt halt, flushing, and Crawly slithers to a stop next to him, lifting his long neck up until their eyes are almost level. Aziraphale feels, absurdly, that he has gone too far, said the wrong thing.

“Begone, vile demon,” he mutters.

Crawly’s tongue flickers out again. It touches the side of Aziraphale’s face, the glancing touch as gentle as that of a butterfly. Gentler. Aziraphale doesn’t know how to politely ask a demon to go away; the world is still so new, the situation hasn’t come up before now. Until now, he hadn’t known that demons even could be gentle.

“If She had ordered you to never give your sssword away,” Crawly hisses, “what would you have done?”

“Oh, do begone!” Aziraphale exclaims. “Please.”

“All right, all right. Keep your halo on.”

Crawly slithers away into the shadows between the trees. The sound like silk against silk lingers in the air long after he has disappeared from view, but once that too has faded away the sun shines brighter and the birds start to sing again. A nightingale flutters down to perch on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

 _I don’t know,_ Aziraphale thinks. _I don’t know what I would have done._

He sits in the glade and eats strawberries until he feels better.

 

*

 

A number of decades later, when the world has become a lot bigger and darker and even more complicated, Gabriel nips down and orders Aziraphale to look into the Land of Nod. The walled city there is a hive of villainy, of violence and vice; he spreads goodness where he can - softening the occasional heart, changing the occasional mind - but it’s like throwing handfuls of sand into the sea. Things sink to the bottom. Things get washed away.

It’s here, on the way to perform some little miracle, that he runs into Crawly again, in a rather grubby tavern. It’s almost a relief to see a familiar and somewhat friendly face in the crowd - humanoid this time, with deep black robes and burnished red hair, slumped against the bar.

Aziraphale clears his throat. Then he clears it again, until Crawly looks up from the clay mug of wine he’s turning around and around in his hands.

“Angel,” he says.

“Crawly. Fancy seeing you here.”

“Could say the same to you. City like this not really your scene, is it?”

“I go where needs must.”

Crawly laughs. “Good luck with _this_ place,” he mutters, flagging down the bartender. He’s clearly been situated in this tavern long enough that the bartender knows to bring him a fresh jug of wine without asking, and she barely seems perturbed by his reptilian eyes. Crawly refills his mug and then passes it to Aziraphale, choosing to drink straight from the jug instead.

Aziraphale perches on the edge of a slightly sticky stool and sips his horrible wine. Whilst he watches the crowd, a few of the tavern’s patrons spontaneously decide it’s time to swear off the drink and a fist-fight in the corner ends peacefully, the miscreants realising they have more in common than had divided them. They throw their arms around each other’s shoulders and start to sing a song.

(And all the wine in the tavern miraculously turns into _much nicer_ wine, which isn’t really spreading goodness as such, but it does put all the staff and patrons in a much better mood for the rest of the week.)

Smiling to himself, Aziraphale turns back to Crawly, who is watching him out of the corner of his yellow eyes.

“Just can’t help yourself, can you?” Crawly sneers.

Aziraphale’s smile fades. 

“Kept up with Cain, have you?” he asks.

Crawly drops the jug. Wine spills across the bar top whilst Crawly stares down at his hands, until Aziraphale flicks his fingers and the jug rights itself, refilled.

“Didn’t know he wasss going to die,” Crawly says, still staring at his hands. “Thought Cain might, I dunno, fall a bit. Grow a few scales? That was all. Didn’t realise Abel was going to, just, just…” He snaps his fingers, picks the jug back up and takes a long swig. “Gone. Jussst like that.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes. He remembers the sight of the blood on the grass; the shock of it. Adam had pressed his face into Abel’s chest and wept like a child. The world became so terribly complicated, after that.

“I understand,” he says. 

Crawly almost drops his jug again.

“The world is still so new,” Aziraphale says, “and humans are, well, they’re really rather unpredictable, aren’t they? We can’t always know what the consequences will be. We’re both just… trying our best and hoping things will be all right. Er. All wrong?”

Propping his chin on his hand, Crawly watches Aziraphale talk. He starts to smile, and then to laugh, very quietly; it’s the gentlest sound Aziraphale has heard in all his time in Nod. He lifts his jug of wine.

“To you trying your best,” he says, “and me doing my worst.”

Aziraphale raises his mug in return.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, sorry this took an age. I'm not the speediest writer at the best of times, and much of the last few weeks has been too bloody hot to write.

The Valley of Elah is a beautiful place at this time of year; the rolling hills so green and the sky so blue, Aziraphale can’t help but think of the Garden, just a little. Bees as fat as his thumb buzz around the wild flowers in the long grass and a porcupine roots contentedly around his feet, where he sits on a rock in the shade of a terebinth tree. Even the air smells of warmth, of spring stretching into summer. It would be a lovely day, if not for the battle.

Aziraphale sighs, propping his chin in his hands. One of the bumblebees lands on his knees, spreading out its wings to bask in the sunlight, and he very gently strokes it with a finger. There is still some wonder to be found, in the delicate shapes of a bumblebee’s wings.

The crunch of approaching footsteps has him almost reaching for his staff, until he catches a whiff of sulphur and relaxes. (The bumblebee, disturbed by his sudden movement, flies away with an offended hum.) Sure enough, a moment later Crawly saunters into view, tossing nuts into the air as he walks and catching them - with uncanny precision - on the end of his tongue.

“Angel!” he calls, with a toothy grin. “Mind if I…?”

He motions towards the rock Aziraphale is perched on.

“By all means.”

Crawly sits himself down next to Aziraphale with an exaggerated sigh. He’s looking a little shabbier than Aziraphale knows the demon usually prefers: robes threadbare and dusty, hair rather unkempt; but he makes himself comfortable with no less than his usual aplomb, kicking off his sandals and digging his bare toes into the earth and rummaging in his bag for another handful of pistachios.

“I’m here with the Philistines,” Crawly says. “Rabble-rousing and suchlike. You know that big bugger, Goliath? Sending him out was my idea.”

“Very imaginative.”

“Yeah, well, I thought so too, but even Goliath gets a bit dull after - what’s it been? A month and a bit. He stomps about a bit, waves his dirty great sword around, your lot quiver in their sandals, another day’s over. Hello,” he adds to the porcupine, tossing it a nut.

“My lot aren’t _quivering_ , they’re… regrouping.”

“Very quivery regrouping.”

“Anyway, Goliath will meet his end soon enough, as all evil must.” Aziraphale sits up a little straighter in the glow of his own righteousness; he looks out over the valley at the assembled troops, the tents and campfires, the young men - all of them, such young men - sitting and talking and waiting for the time to come when they might die for their cause.

Aziraphale sighs. “Although I can’t say I’m awfully fond of it, war.”

“Mhm. Pistachio?” Crawly shakes the bag at him.

“Oh, thank you. Would you… like some cheese?”

“ _Cheese?_ What’ve you got cheese on a battlefield for?”

Aziraphale waves a hand helplessly at the pile. “The nice young chap I’ve been keeping an eye on, David, plays the harp ever so well - his father sent him along with supplies for his brothers. I’m holding onto them for him. Er, the supplies, that is; not the brothers.”

“David… David… I’ve heard of him, haven’t I?”

Even with miraculously good vision and the unavoidable sensation of Her blessing wafting over him like the scent of extremely holy freshly baked bread, it takes Aziraphale a little while to point David out in the crowd. In a sea of young men, he must be the youngest. A small head of dark curls, the simple (and rather sheep-scented) garb of a shepherd boy.

“Ah, there he is!”

“The big beardy bloke?”

“No, just to the left of him.”

“Interesting facial scar?”

“Down a bit.”

“ _Him?_ ” Crawley looks back and forth between Aziraphale’s face and David’s distant form, his eyebrows raised. “He looks about twelve.”

“Fourteen, actually,” Aziraphale corrects him; Crawly just laughs. “And anyway, he’s anointed.”

“That so? Hang on - isn’t your King Saul anointed too?”

“He _was_. The Almighty, er, changed Her mind.”

“Oh, he’s not going to like that.”

“No.” Aziraphale sigh. He shields his eyes against the glare of the sun as he watches Goliath stomp out onto the battlefield once more, swinging his very big sword around and calling for a worthy opponent to dare to face him. “No, I don’t suppose he will.”

Together, they sit on the rock and watch David step out of the crowd.

 

*

 

Once good has successfully triumphed over evil, Aziraphale gathers up his staff and the (now slightly depleted) supplies and he bids Crawly farewell, only for Crawly to saunter after him down the hill towards Saul’s camp. The demon strolls along as if it were perfectly natural for the two of them to walk together, swinging his sandals in one hand, whistling a tune Aziraphale hasn’t heard in at least a century. 

After sending him several politely questioning glances, which Crawly ignores, Aziraphale clears his throat.

“The Philistine camp is back in that direction, isn’t it?”

“Getting a bit sick of the Philistines, truth be told,” Crawly replies, cheerfully. “And besides, I want to meet your shepherd who lopped off my champion’s head.”

“David felled him with a single stone shot from his sling.”

“And then hacked his head off! A bit grim, that. He’s already dead, don’t need to go around…” He makes an impressively accurate squelching sound. “Dismembering corpses.”

“I believe it was a symbolic gesture.”

“Symbolic of what? David’s anger management issues?”

“Of a resounding victory over the forces of evil,” Aziraphale snipes, striding ahead of Crawly towards the King’s tent; although he does pause to hold the tent flap open for Crawly, which slightly spoils the effect.

“Resounding victory over _necks_ ,” Crawly mutters, following Aziraphale inside.

Within, the air is cool and dim, lightly fragranced with incense that doesn’t quite mask the scent of human sweat - or the new, fresh tang of blood tracked in by David. Golaith’s great head rests in the centre of the war table, eyes staring, tongue lolling, one of David’s hands still resting proprietarily in the blood-soaked hair. The lad is chattering away to another youth Aziraphale recognises as Jonathan, Saul’s son, the two of them staring at each other in the way that humans sometimes do. 

It’s always marvelous to watch, when two souls seem to align just so and recognise each other. One can (if one is of heavenly stock) almost see Her hand at work, nudging something into its perfect place. Aziraphale is so content to bask in that sensation like a bright flare of light, he almost doesn’t notice it when Crawly moves into the shadows, to where Saul stands watching his son. So wide and bright is Jonathan’s smile, Aziraphale almost misses it when Crawly leans in close Saul.

But the soft hiss of Crawly’s voice is louder than any human soul.

“Looks like you’ve got competition,” Crawly whispers in the ear of the King.

 

*

 

Saul does rather keep on trying to throw spears at David after that.

It isn’t pleasant, per se, to have Crawly take up residence in the palace and slither his way into the King’s confidence, in the year or so since they ran into each other in the Valley of Elah - to say nothing of continually putting his bare feet up on the furniture, provoking petty fights between servants, and swiping figs from Aziraphale’s plate. No, it isn’t nice, to have one’s adversary living in such close quarters; but there really is something to be said for having some proper infernal wiles to thwart on a regular basis. One can really _feel_ the good one does, he supposes, when there’s a demon around to complain about it.

“I know you made him miss that throw,” complains the demon.

“It’s hardly my fault if the King has rather poor aim whilst drunk.”

They’re taking an after-dinner turn around the rose garden. The night is mild and bright and still beautifully scented, as Crowley had given the flowers a menacing look when the petals began to close earlier in the evening.

“Well, if it wasn’t you, David’s got _miraculously_ good at dodging those spears.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees blandly, “he’s coming along quite nicely.”

Crawly shoots him a vicious look. He rips petals off the flowers as they pass, shredding them between his fingers; Aziraphale frowns on the wanton destruction of plant life, but on the other hand, the scent of the crushed petals is really quite lovely.

As they near the stables, Crawly leers at a strapping young man rubbing down a horse. The stable-hand begins to leer back, until Crawly hisses and sticks out his tongue - far too long and inhumanly forked - and the stable-hand turns the colour of curdled milk.

“Stay back, demon!” he cries as he runs away.

“You’ll give the poor boy nightmares,” Aziraphale sighs, catching hold of the reins of the startled horse and giving her a pat on the nose.

Crawly simply laughs, his tongue back within normal human parameters. “You should be thanking me, angel. I’ve banished lustful thoughts from his mind for at least a week.”

“It hardly counts when you gave him the lustful thoughts to begin with.”

Aziraphale conjures up an apple for the horse and smiles as she eats it out of the palm of his hand, her hot horsey breath against his fingers. He isn’t too keen on horses as a means of transport - too much mess and too little padding (and he does still rather miss the unicorns) - but they do have such gentle eyes.

“There now,” he says, stroking her neck. “You ignore that nasty old snake.”

“Charming.”

Approaching the horse with an eyebrow raised and a dubious expression twisting his lips, Crawly strokes her mane, then wipes his fingers on his robe. He nods his head back in the direction they came and says,

“So what happens next?”

“Well, we could stroll down to the lake…”

“No, not - I mean, with Daniel and Saul.”

“I’m hardly going to share heavenly plans with you.”

Crawly rolls his eyes, starting on another flower. “David’s meant to be King, isn’t he? That’s what all your anointing business was about. So he’s going to have to off Saul and Jonathan, isn’t he?”

“I hope not.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Crawly murmurs absent-mindedly, tugging at a petal, before he glances sideways at Aziraphale and hurriedly adds, “I mean, I’ve put in a lot of work with Saul, you know. Don’t want it going to waste.”

“Yes, Jonathan is a lovely boy, isn’t he? Do stop shredding the roses.”

Crawly promptly sticks his hand deep into the bush and snaps off another bloom, staring Aziraphale dead in the eyes. 

“Honestly,” Aziraphale tuts. 

They start strolling down the path towards the lake again, more or less together. Instead of shredding petals as they walk, this time Crawly sticks the rose behind his ear, where the deep red clashes with his hair. He looks rather charming, Aziraphale supposes, in a roguish sort of way.

They’re approaching the water when Aziraphale feels - almost simultaneously - a familiar glow of love and the jab of Crawly’s unnecessarily sharp elbow in his side.

“Speak of the devils,” Crawly hisses in his ear.

And sure enough, there Jonathan and David stand at the edge of the lake, their heads tipped close together, their hands entwined. Human eyes probably wouldn’t be able to spot them at this distance, in this dark, nor human ears pick up their words.

“My father wants you dead,” Jonathan is saying. “You must leave this place.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale whispers.

Crawly nudges Aziraphale again, jerking his head back the way they came. Leaving the humans in peace, they turn and begin the walk back up to the palace in near silence.

With a little bit of effort, Aziraphale can know more or less what mortals think and feel - and Crawly presumably must have a similar, eviller skillset - but it’s rarely necessary for him to make the effort. Humans share it all so freely, so easily, sometimes without even realising they’re doing it; in their faces, and their voices, and the way their bodies move.

Jonathan’s voice had been so small and scared, and David had held onto his hands so tightly.

“This is your fault,” Aziraphale says.

Crawly points at himself. “Who, me?”

“Yes, you! Slithering around, whispering in Saul’s ear. He was a good man, before you turned up.”

“Never said he should kill anyone. _Your_ lot are the ones who anointed Saul and then changed their minds and plonked his replacement right under his nose! Can’t blame a guy for getting a bit tetchy at that, can you?”

“You incite him!”

“I never say anything he isn’t already thinking.”

At the foot of the steps to the palace, they come to a halt, glaring at each other. The rose is still tucked behind Crawly’s ear, no longer so charming; instead, all Aziraphale can see is its thorns. How foolish of him, he tells himself, to go strolling in the rose gardens with a demon as if they were colleagues. 

“Begone,” he snaps.

“ _You_ begone.”

The demon turns on his heel and stalks away, flowerbeds withering in his wake. The Lord is testing Saul, Aziraphale reminds himself as he watches Crawly make a rude hand gesture at the nearest rose bush; all the petals drop to the ground and spontaneously combust in a small, rose-scented inferno.

Wafting floral smoke out of his face, Aziraphale suspects She might be testing him as well.

 

*

 

When David flees Saul, Aziraphale goes with him, and it takes several years of toil and trouble and time spent hiding in caves before he sees Crawly again. Of course he feels the approach of evil long before it actually arrives, so he’s ready and waiting at the edge of camp when Crawly finally rides into view one evening.

“I hope you’re not here to cause trouble,” Aziraphale calls once Crawly is within earshot - the earshot of heavenly stock anyway, which is quite a bit further than human ears can reach, so he gets a couple of funny looks.

“No,” Crawly replies.

“Because I think David has more than proven he can’t be tempted into killing Saul, so you might as well stop trying.”

“Said no, didn’t I?” Crawly snaps, sliding down from his horse and handing off the reins to the nearest human: a captain of the guard, who looks briefly very surprised to find a horse in his possession, until Crawly flaps a hand at him and the human’s expression smooths into one of vague compliance. 

“Then why-” Aziraphale catches hold of Crawly by the elbow of his frankly rather ragged robe, walking them further from the edge of camp and from human ears and eyes; Crawly follows uncomplaining, which is never a good sign. “Why _are_ you here?”

“Saul and Jonathan are dead.”

“Oh.”

Aziraphale lets his hand drop.

It’s cold out here in the desert at night; a wind blows in from the north, rushing over the sand dunes, the sound like silk against silk. Temperature is one of those things he never really noticed in the earliest of days - but he wears a human body, and his human skin prickles in the chill of the wind. Form shapes nature, after all. It must be the human form that produces the ache beneath his breastbone, as tender as any bruise.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says again. He presses a hand against his chest, over the ache.

“Saul snuffed himself,” Crawly continues, his face tilted up towards the sky. “Before the Philistines could get to him. Jonathan got himself skewered in battle. Nothing brave or dramatic, just… dead. Gone.”

“And you came to tell me?”

Crawly shrugs, still frowning at the clouds. “They’re peculiar, humans, aren’t they? Live for _barely_ a century, just spend their time wandering around hitting each other and looking like someone shaved an ape. But they’re good fun to watch. Easy to get attached to.”

“They are.”

“ _You_ , I mean. Easy for you to get attached to them. Not me.”

“Of course.”

“Anyway, I had a temptation in the area, thought I’d pop by with the news and start a drunken brawl in your camp, maybe encourage an affair or two.”

Beneath his hand, Aziraphale can feel his heart beat (or at least, the heartbeat of his corporeal form, which is a small but significant difference) - it’s one of those sensations that took a few decades to get used to and which he doesn’t _technically_ need, but there’s something grounding in it; in the reminder that every mortal being holds within their chest their own personal countdown to the end. 

And anyway, the corporeal form starts going a little funny if you turn off too many of the vital functions.

“No rest for the wicked, eh?” Aziraphale says.

The corner of Crawly’s mouth curls upwards and he tilts his head to the side to smile at Aziraphale. His eyes shine like yellow moons in the night.

“None,” he says.

 

*

 

Aziraphale sits with David through the night - David, dry-eyed and silent, holding his hands together as tightly as if in prayer, but he is not praying. Instead he sits and breathes and stares down at his sword where it lies sheathed on top of his gear. Goliath’s sword, Aziraphale remembers, given to David by Ahimelech, the priest at Nob, when they first fled Saul all those months ago; when David and Jonathan had both still been so young. 

It is so easy to get attached to humans, despite all their many sins and flaws, because the humans get so attached to each other. They love and hate and care for and fall out with one another, and do it all so deeply and completely. Aziraphale had feared that bright flare of light he had always felt between Jonathan and David would be extinguished by David’s grief, but instead he feels it glowing all the brighter. Fiercely and terribly, yes, but still beautifully. 

When they emerge from their vigil in the morning, it’s to find the camp in disarray - overnight there were three fist fights, two broken marriages, and an outbreak of petty thievery, and Crawly is long gone.


End file.
